Strong start! The diagram shows that you are considering new paving for the driveway. Is that blacktop or actual pavers? Are stained/stamped concrete driveways feasible in your area? If you choose the latter, you could incorporate that into the patio area as well. I like the court yard effect you've achieved by expanding the front patio. You may want to carry it even further, deepening it so that your entrance from the driveway was at least 5' wide. It would also allow more room for the table and chairs without impinging on the traffic flow to the door. A cedar structure of four upright 8'x8' posts with strong rectilinear crossbeams on top (think bold statement rather than fussy) could also be used to define the area. It would visually reference the fence on the south-west side of your property. Are those the dreaded fortress walls you've drawn on the street side of the patio? May I suggest instead a single planter "box", maybe 2 to 3' wide x 3' high x (length between garage corner to front door), maybe with the same stone facing that you have on your garage? You could either plant directly into it or conceal individual pots. And I really like the design of your front walkway - linear and interesting at the same time. What stone are you thinking of there? I would balance the hardscape of that and the driveway on the left hand side of the yard with a few BIG boulders, like a triptych, on the far side closer to the cross street. I assume that you will be transplanting the healthy bushes and tree that you currently have near the entry way. The curving beds look good, tying well into each other. Is that a corner bed right beside the sidewalk near the cross street? The only thing left is a some kind of water feature. Hmmmm...

I wish I had Easy Going, it looks like a beauty, but my yellow has no peach, amber or pink veining or undertones. It's egg-yolk yellow and simply pales to lemon-cream with age. My main regret is that it blows too quickly to a very open, unattractive form. This describes my 'Easy Going'. Actually "the light green shiny foliage" comment makes me lean towards EG, also the growth habit of your standard. Livin Easy, Easy Going, and the offspring Hot Cocoa have very distinctive foliage, prickles, canes, and growth habit. What makes ID trickier in your case that you are in Europe, where there are cultivars we don't have here. Easy Going and Livin Easy are very popular as standards here--whether or not that is true in France, I have no idea. Usually though standard roses, which are much more expensive than the regular ones, are less apt to be an obscure variety because of the extra expense. So look at very common cultivars. Have you looked at Sunsprite and Sunflare? Might also be one of those. Easy Going foliage:

I am so glad that everyone has liked what they got so far! Now, I just have to find some more seeds for Gary! LOL! Thanks again to Gary for sending in so many beans! You really helped everyone to gets beans they really wanted! Gary, are there any other veggies or anything seed wise that you can think of that you really want? PLEASE let me know! I am going to be putting in a seed order soon somewhere and I would really like to get you something special. Please email me some ideas! Christy

I agree exactly about the practicallity that my kitchen screams. In part that is great. I had already given up extra cabinets to provide for a large window. We had originally kept the left wall solid. The large window reduced upper cabinets to a bare minimum (sometimes I think too few). We were going to use our existing cabinets (thus the odd sizes on the layout) but later decided to reuse them instead for the laundry area. When I count the cabinets that we currently have and what we are going with, we are substantially down space. That said, many of our current cabinets are empty/near empty and we are going with more efficient use of cabinets )drawer bases and a pull-out pantry). The frig in the pantry, though obvious really worked for us since we were able to "borrow" slightly from the laundry and sink the frig into a 30" spot giving it a "countertop" depth w/o the the price tag. Being that the frig being the centerpiece of the current kitchen, hiding it anywhere was a MAJOR plus. It seems like with every "special" thing in the kitchen I have to give up more space. I really like the idea of the curved island. There are some practical issues (none I wanted others to be concerned about when coming up with ideas) with venting the house that we have to be concerned about. We were going to have a short wall under the island that will house all the venting, electrical, etc. I'm going to sit down with pencil and paper and see how I could make that work. I love the idea of wrapping cabinets around the nook. The windows are 22" from the floor. We'd need an exit to the deck, so I'm not sure how it might look if it wasn't continous cabinetary. This is one of our favorite spots to sit in the house.